More Figure Drawing

I was able to make it out to a scanner and I now have some more figure studies from my week to show you. I'm unsure if I should show some of the other exercises I've done but I'll consider it for the future.

 This first one is just studies from Bridgman's Life Drawing book and some sketching from reference to get things going.

This little batch were all from reference. I've come across some wonderful reference things lately and I've been trying to use them more. Each of these had their good and bad in the practicing and I think I'm improving in the understanding of light and how it works on the body.

















 

I find that I like sketching in erasable colored pencil. It for some reason it helps me get into the zone and work the problem more effectively. I wanted to work on angles and likenesses with the portraits. I think that will be a good and regular use of the day during the week I have allotted to that time.

In the end, these last couple of weeks have been good for helping me establish exactly what I need to do with my practice. the exercise sources I'm using feel good, the practice feels good and the allotted time feels right to keep me learning without burning myself out and I think I can improve this way.

If you're looking at these, please keep checking in and follow along here or on my deviant art or Facebook pages.

Compositional studies 32-50

If you missed the first batch of studies it's Here.

Here's the next batch.

I will do a LONG debriefing on this project once I'm done with the color studies (a project that may take some serious time) but I feel like I've learned a ton just from these composition studies and I'm eager to get to the color. 

Still Life

Well I just realized that I haven't shared one of the few projects I've been able to do with this new self imposed boot camp I'm putting myself through here at leas (I've wanted to do this for a while but I was dealing with a bout of depression and other issues). It's on my Facebook and Deviant art but I'll record it here too. 

The piece has some definite improvements over my usual digital painting and it is true, still life is THE best way to work on technique and painting textures. I should be doing these much more often than I have in the past so I've carved out time to to work on something like this eat least once a week along with my figures and other things. 

And here you can see the steps involved in the creation of the project. 

Compositional studies 1-31

Hey folks. It's been a while hasn't it?

I was working on my own personal work trying to apply what I've learned but I was not growing at quite the speed I desired.

After hitting a solid bit of depression and then having to take a look at what I was doing wrong I decided to give myself a bit of a boot camp over the next several months. I figure, since it's been 3 years since I graduated and my skills are now about where I feel they SHOULD have been sometime around junior year of college (so in essence I'm feeling about 4 years behind where I would like to be but that's being eaten up fast). I'm going back to basics and putting in the serious work necessary to improve to the level I want.

To facilitate that I'm doing a little bit of Noah Bradley's Art camp coupled with my own notes on what I know needs to be done with my training. Lots of tutorials, lots of studying and lots of practice. I have a set schedule for my practicing that's broken up into multiple days and I work on different aspects of things on different days.

Not all of it's figure and while that was the original purpose of this blog, I see it now as more of an online sketchbook. Now some of the things I've done I can't show right now since my scanner is not operational right now. I'll show more digital stuff in interim but that means the posts won't be quite as rapid fire. Wednesday and Thursday though are master studies/fundamentals day and digital painting practice day respectively so today I have 31 of 50 black and white compositional studies to show.

Noah Bradley's art camp apparently has you do about 50 comp studies and 50 color studies in the first week (I'm guessing because I was challenged to do 100 by another artist I know who was doing the full camp.) And let me tell you something. Even though composition is one of my strong suits, I DEFINITELY learned a lot more about it today. I'm going to try to crank out the remaining 19 compositional studies and the 50 color studies tomorrow.

Again, these are master studies of other artists work for the purposes of studying composition. Some are good, some are TERRIBLE. You have been warned. Enjoy.

 

 

 

 

If you're interested in the video that deals with these from Noah's Art camp you can see the link to that video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQfF-P70V2Q

And on top of that, if you want to give it a try yourself, feel free and let me know. I'd like to know I'm not suffering alone.

New bonus post: Landscapes

I almost forgot about these. Just finished three 30 minute landscape studies I'd like to share with anyone kind enough to be hanging around here.

All three look much better small but I don't think they're that bad for my firs time in forever doing such quick paintings. All done digitally from photo reference. 

Bonus post: Lighting stuff

I know that I call this blog Go Figure and that is primarily because it's goal was to help me improve my understanding of anatomy and the human figure. However, it is also a digital sketchbook, akin to the one I keep at conceptart.org. As such I'll share some of the other things I work on to improve my skills.

I had a lot of fun with the one on top especially and learned a bit more about doing lighting in my images in the process. 

Unit 3: Limbs cont'd feet and Unit 4: Portraiture

 

Okay guys, heads up here's a brief summary of both why posts haven't been coming lately, and why that's changing now in a big way.

I recently quit my job with Walgreens and I realize just how much of my energy the place was sapping. I hadn't been drawing or taking care of myself because I hated what I was doing and hated my situation so much. I'm back to trying to keep things in order and I feel so much better. Now it's time to start doing what I do best again. On that note...

Hands and feet man. Two of the hardest things to draw in existence. I know more than my fair share of artists who are scared of attempting to put too much focus on either of these areas because they're so easy to make look weird. In all honestly I could spend a month just learning to draw these well and I've put nowhere near the focus on them they need. I will likely return to these at some point.
 

Part of the reason I admittedly rushed this important but easy to overlook segment of the body is because I also have another area that is both extremely important, NOT easy to overlook and is an area I've struggled with in the past. The head and face. 

If there's one thing to be on guard against with drawing the face in my opinion, it's drawing what you think is there instead of what is. Everyone spends a lot of their lives looking at faces and while we instinctively know when something is wrong, it doesn't mean we instinctively know how to make it look right. Also I've noticed I have to be on guard for my lean (something that sometimes happens when objects seem to distort and "lean" in a direction. For me, usually up and to the right since I'm right handed. 

These are planar drawings of the head to get a general idea ow how the big shapes are connected. Next up are the features of the head and portraits. I expect I'll do more than a few portraits. Here's one as a baseline before I leave. Let's see if I improve and how quickly. 

Unit 3: Limbs Cont'd-Hands

Okay, it's been a long time since I've posted anything here. Too long and frankly I'm a little irritated right now as one of my other sites I post things is giving me fits again so I'm going to start by posting what I need here and seeing if it works.

 

I promise if I get this to do what I want, I'll give a bit of an update on what's been going on. 

Bonus Post: Perspective

Well I actually had time to do a little bonus exercise and I thought I'd upload it before I have to start thinking about going to my hellish job :(

I learned about perspective very young. I was about 8 years old when one of my first art teachers taught me the technique. I remember loving it but I guess sometimes, since I learned it so young that I take for granted that I need to practice it as often as the other stuff I do and link it with the new stuff I've learned. Someone noted that working on the solidity of construction, especially with regards to perspective would help so I decided to give it a go. There's a pose from the gesture drawing tool with a low angle shot that I love but it also has a great sense of perspective that I wanted to try to learn from.

This is the reference pose. I chose to look at this in a VERY planar and blocked out exercise. The goal was not to get it to look like the model but to examine perspective, planes and a certain level of proportion. 

First, some small scale sketches.

I like trying to work out perspective small scale first. It helps me keep the vanishing points situated and means I don't always need a ruler. I went with one this time just so I could be POSITIVE of the angles and everything. 

Legs are a different unit down the road but I couldn't resist as the pose emphasized the legs through the low angle shot. Also extra points for a bit of lighting practice. 

Unit Two: Trunk Cont'd-planar stuff

New stuff today. I wanted to put this up yesterday but life has a nasty habit of getting in the way of making art.

I got blindsided by my store manager at my job and my schedule got changed without my knowing. I was in the middle of a drawing when I got a call from my manager wondering where I was since I'm always on time (early in fact) and I was supposed to be there about a half an hour ago when he called.

I, however, was unaware I was supposed to even bee at work! Needless to say I was pissed. I'd been planning on going to sleep within the next hour when he called and then ended up having to do an overnight shift out of nowhere that I was not physically or mentally prepared for.

Anyway enough of that nonsense. Drawings!

Gesture drawings to start. While I'm still not a fan of these they're getting easier and I'm hating doing them less (if only because they look less like hen scratches now. 

Next a up, a paltry pair of planar practice pieces: Try saying that three times fast. The bottom one is actually what I was in the middle of when I got the call and I was NOT happy. I was planning on getting a couple of other things done that night and the next morning but like I said, life. It's a four letter word for a reason. 

Finishing off this post with a couple of body type studies. Not as fun and far more technical than my last body type blast but still educational. 

I think after a couple more digital paintings that are hopefully coming next post we'll move on to some of the limbs. I'm thinking arms since I've been cheating a bit on my trunk definition and drawing them anyway and they're easier to work on at work since I'm cut off from my other references and without a lot of down time. 

Unit Two: The Trunk-Body type studies

Before I head in to work today I thought I'd do something with Celia M's comment earlier and add some variety to the body types studied.

As I may or may not have pointed out here on this blog earlier, fantasy art has a tendency to go with the classical ideas of "ideal proportions" and has a tendency to homogeneity in its body types. I personally think this has something to do with the Greco-Roman tradition inherent in the mindset behind the training necessary to represent a relatively accurate version of the form but that's just me.

Enough philosophizing though. Here's a little something to tide you over until the next image blast.

I really need to remember to give myself some more warm up time though. It's especially apparent in the upper two on the left and right but my lean came back. Mostly eliminated in the later ones it did show up a little bit today. 

All models here are actually pics found around the internet and used for educational purposes. 

Unit Two: The trunk cont'd (retroactive)

Why retroactive? Because I found some studies I forgot to upload. 

Unit Two: The trunk

This unit is going to be a good bit longer than the skeletal unit was (though as I said, bits are going to show up from time to time). Without further ado let's jump right in. 

First one here... yeah this doesn't have a lot to do with the figure... or does it? Dun dun dun. Okay in all seriousness it does and it doesn't. Really I felt very tight when I started working one day and though that some perspective shapes might fix that. It does help with the body though because essentially what I'm trying to do is reaffirm my knowledge of how the body behaves with regards to perspective. Having a shape, say a rectangular prism, around the body helps to figure that out. 

Decided to play around with changing camera angle and what that does to examining the form. That sort of came off of the perspective shapes exercise earlier. Also gave me another opportunity to practice turning of the trunk. A couple are referenced from one of my books and one, the one with 'reference' written next to it is from the gesture drawing tool. however, several are me trying out some of what I've learned about the spine, torso and body movement so there are a few from imagination as well. 

Did another digital painting study of a female trunk. Once again the gesture drawing tool provided the model here. Don't think I succeeded as well as I'd like but once again I did learn something from it. 

Finally I've got two male trunk studies. Both were done relatively quickly and helped me decide on my next move. I definitely need to do some muscle studies for the front and back of the torso before moving forward. So that's what you'll see on the next episode of Go Figure. 

See you soon.